John Kerry Wants To Re-Fight The Swift-Boaters, And The Media Posse Has His Back

A little taste. A major dispute concerns whether Bob Schachte was on the skimmer with Kerry; he disputes Kerry's (varying) accounts of how he got wounded in one engagement. Two men, Runyon and Zaladonis, back Kerry and claim that Schacte wasn't there, so couldn't know.

The media, of course, takes this as dispositive. Schachte wasn't there; he's a liar; two guys say so.

They don't consider the possibility that perhaps Runyon and Zaladonis weren't there.

Now, I don't imagine the Times will follow up on a point they raised in the story when they wrote this:

"The three guys who in fact were in the boat all say he wasn't there and will tell you he wasn't there," he said. "We know he wasn't there, and we have all kinds of ways of proving it."

However, if they do have an investigative reporter to spare, they might ponder this - there is precious little evidence, beyond their say-so, that Zaldonis and Runyon were on that skimmer with Kerry.

These skimmer crews were put together on an ad-hoc basis, and Runyon never served with Kerry before or after that night. Zaladonis, however, ended up on Kerry's boat (PCF-44) a week later.

But puzzle over this - Kerry did not remember the names of the two men in the skimmer with him when he discussed it with the Boston Globe in 2003. And Douglas Brinkley, who wrote Keery's "Tour of Duty" did not identify the two men either, even though he interviewed Zaladonis for the book.

I find that odd - here is Zaladonis being interviewed about his personal history with Kerry and he never mentions that he was with Kerry when Kerry had his first combat and got his first Purple Heart? How did that not come up?

That is quite odd indeed. Zaladonis now has such a vivid memory of the engagement, but didn't mention it all when interviewed about Kerry's war record previously. Kerry is quite certain that Schachte wasn't on his skimmer, and yet couldn't remember who was on the boat when interviewed before.

Now, of course, he's quite certain that the men who back his war (fish) stories were the guys on that boat.

This is what the media means when it says stuff like "the Swift Boats' claims have been throroughly discredited."

It's also amusing that the media sets up a Swift Boaters vs. Kerry controversy regarding his Silver Star, when in fact no Swift Boaters were present for that engagement, and say so-- the controversy actually concerns Kerry's inconsistent reports about the engagement. So it's a Kerry vs. Kerry dispute, not a Kerry vs. Swift Boaters dispute.

Obviously, either John Kerry or John Kerry is lying about about it. But the media don't really like that dilemma, so they simply make the dispute between the Good Guys (Kerry and his supporters) and the Bad Guys (everyone else).

Just One Minute snarks:

John Kerry wants to re-fight the Swift Boats wars. My goodness, that is the only thing that could get the Times to cover this - during his campaign they stayed about as far from this story as Kerry was from Cambodia at Christmas time.

The charges -- detailed, substantiated, and sworn to -- are entirely ignored. The rebuttals, however, are painstakingly reported.